A playbook in TradeOnyx is a strategy template — a named bundle of (description, target risk-reward ratio, active flag, optional reference image). You create them in Settings → Tags & Playbooks. When you review a trade in the trade-detail modal, the playbook picker lets you assign one of your active playbooks to that trade.
The rest is automatic. The Trades tab can filter by playbook. The Overview tab's KPI tiles recompute on the filtered subset, so "my London-Open-Breakout playbook performance" is three clicks: filter Trades by playbook, switch to Overview, read the WLR + Win Rate + Expectancy.
Archived playbooks stay attached to historical trades (you don't lose history) but disappear from the picker on new trades. That's how you retire a setup without erasing its track record.
How to design playbooks that pay you: - Name them by setup, not by symbol — "Breakout-Pullback" generalizes; "EURUSD Breakout" is too narrow and you'll end up with a playbook per pair. - Three to seven active playbooks is the sweet spot — fewer and you can't filter productively; more and the picker becomes friction during review and you assign by mood, not by setup. - The target R:R is a discipline anchor — set it before the trade, compare to the actual R after exit. The gap ("target 2.0R, realised 0.8R, scalped out at 40% of target") is the most actionable signal in the journal feed. - Read the per-playbook WLR + Win Rate combination — a playbook with WLR 1.1 and Win Rate 52% looks fine but the breakeven is 47.6%; one bad week can flip it negative. A playbook with WLR 2.5 and Win Rate 35% is sturdy because the breakeven is 28.6%. - Cull aggressively — a playbook on its 30th trade with negative expectancy is not improving. Archive it. The trader who keeps every old setup "in case it works again" is also the trader assigning it to today's trade by accident.
TradeOnyx makes the playbook the unit of strategy honesty. Without a playbook label, a profitable trader is just "profitable" — fine, but unactionable. With playbooks, the same trader sees that 80% of profit comes from one of five active playbooks; the other four are noise. That's a portfolio decision, made visible.
The surface that closes the loop: in the Trades tab, group by playbook (TRA-46 group-by feature handles this) and read the per-bucket Net P&L sorted descending. The "London-Open-Breakout: +€4,200 over 27 trades" bucket is paying its way; the "Counter-Trend Scalp: −€680 over 19 trades" bucket is not. Open Settings → Playbooks, archive the second, and your cognitive bandwidth goes back to setups that earn it.
The pairing with the R-multiple article: target R:R lives on the playbook, realised R lives on the trade. A playbook whose realised R consistently undershoots target R is one where you exit early — that's a trade-management leak, not a setup-quality leak. Different fix.